Here it is the 49th version of the Weekly Gamefront Network News Update, the news part of the update covers the news side of the Network and the Gamefront Main site over the past week. There has been a fair bit of news from the Main site including a lot of trailers, reviews, previews and a lot more. This week there are lots of reviews, more news from the latest games as well as a lot of news from VGA 2011, with more to come next week of course. However you can find more news can be found from Gamefront News - Here

We would love to hear any suggestions that you have; if you see something that you would like to be added to the Weekly Network Update, or you have any suggestions that you think may improve the Network Update then simply drop me an email at Danny[at]filefront[dot]com (please put "Network Update" as the subject though ).

Also If you like the Network Update please feel free write a comment as I would love to hear any critism, or support (constructive though please as this is the only way that I know how good or bad the insider is and it would help me to improve this further). Also I should mention that the comments section is not for complaining about the bugs of the network sites, most of these we do know about and are with the Break.com Tech Team , also again this is not the place for comments about the bugs, I myself do not have the ability or the knowledge to fix them, although you can use our forums to post your comments here - http://forums.filefront.com/filefront-com-help-center-1272/

It’s that time of year again. The time when we all look back over the games that were released this year and try to decide which of them are the best. Instead of simply telling you what we think, we also decied that we want to know what you think as well. To that end, we proudly present the 2011 GameFront Reader’s Choice awards!

Here’s how it works. Simply visit our Facebook page and vote for the best game in each category, including Game of the Year. If your pick for that category isn’t there, you’ll be able to add it to the poll. Voting will be open until Sunday, December 18 at 11:59 PM.

Dec. 19 – 23, we’ll be announcing our staff picks for each category, as well as the winners in the Reader’s Choice voting. On Thursday the 23rd, we’ll also be announcing one lucky reader whose name was drawn to win a $60 game of their choice. All you’ll need to do is vote, and you’ll be entered to win.

So, without further ado, here the nominees for each category, courtesy of our awesome video team. Watch the videos, go vote, and good luck!

Gamefront News: 10 Great Games You Probably Didn’t Play in 2011, But Should

We’ve seen a huge number of pretty great games in 2011. The triple-A category has been bursting with sequels that are actually good, ranging from solidly awesome multiplayer offerings in games such as Driver: San Francisco, Gears of War 3, Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, to awesome single-player-only campaigns in Deus Ex: Human Revolution and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

With the great titles coming non-stop from Dead Space 2 and Portal 2 straight through to Skyrim, it has been easy to miss even more great games that have been overshadowed by the biggest players in the industry. Smaller downloadable titles, indie masterpieces and the generally overlooked titles were waiting in the wings as the big guys took center stage. So we’ve compiled a list of titles that you might have missed but are definitely worth a look.

UPDATE: Literally minutes after this article was published, news broke that Shigeru Miyamoto will be stepping down from his position as head of Nintendo’s game design department to work on smaller projects. Though Miyamoto will continue working for Nintendo, it’s yet another bad headline for the video game giant.

By any conventional metric, 2011 has been a huge success for the video game industry. Modern Warfare 3 smashed retail records, pursued closely up the charts by other big-budget, big-selling blockbusters. Gamers witnessed the conclusion of beloved trilogies like Uncharted and Gears of War, and millions flocked to inventive new titles like L.A. Noire and Minecraft.

Amidst all this triumph, however, one company Nintendo, has been conspicuously quiet. Once thought invincible, it staggered through a disastrous 2011. While its competitors have been busy celebrating the best year in recent memory, the Japanese giant has been left wondering what went wrong.

Warning signs began to show this spring, when it became clear that Nintendo’s highly touted new handheld, the 3DS, would ship without a killer app. In fact, the list of launch titles was downright underwhelming, offering little incentive to fence-sitting customers trying to decide if a launch-day 3DS was really a prudent buy.

It’s no secret that combat in Mass Effect 3 is going to be significantly more hardcore than even ME2. We’ve had plenty of experience with that, but what we haven’t had the chance to experience is the way Commander Sheperd has been changed as a result of that ramped up combat system. Now’s our chance. This week’s BioWare Pulse has a brief but meaty look at the way they’ve adapted the commander to appear more dynamic during combat, including a more involved interaction with events and the environment. You’ll need to skip the first 30 seconds or so, however, as they’re just a plea to hurry up and vote for ME3 as the most anticipated game of 2012 for this year’s VGAs, airing on Spike tomorrow.

A couple years ago, some folks on Steam started a petition. They wanted to get Steam members to “sign” it in hopes that they could get Valve to say something about Half-Life 3/Half-Life 2 Ep. 3. So far, they have about 1,200 signatures that they’ve collected over the past two years. So far, the petition hasn’t gotten anything done.

That’s not to say it’s a bad idea, though. If you’re gonna beg for news, you might as well beg with 1,200 of your closest friends. I’m not going to sign this petition, but I will do some begging of my own.

Valve: please just say something already about Half-Life. It’s been too long. You need to give us hope that this story will be wrapped up someday. Pretty please?

Indie hit Bastion is available on Xbox Live and Steam, but you don’t have to download a copy to play it. If you’ve got Google’s Chrome web browser, you can give Bastion a go for free right now.

Bastion will run you $14.99 on Chrome (the same price as on Steam), and gives you the benefit of cloud saving, which means you can play it on any Chrome browser anywhere as long as you sign in with your Google account credentials. It doesn’t support a gamepad, though, while the Steam version does.

You do get the option to try before you buy with the Chrome version of Bastion, however. Just hit this link to find it in the Chrome Web Store. You can also read our review right here.

EA has confirmed that Origin will be the only way to update Battlefield 3. Forget about downloading patches through mirrors — like Game Front — in order to get faster download speeds or to save the file to disk.

BF3′s latest patch weighed in at a hefty 3.6 gigs, so we’re not dealing with inconsequential file sizes. While Origin has provided fast download speeds for most users, Australian players have been desperate for mirrors.

However, EA has no plans for a standalone installer, making Origin the only means through which you can update BF3.

Ah, game developers. When will you learn to not put spoilers on your LinkedIn pages? Not today, I guess.

Ashley Morgan of Ubisoft put something interesting on her page. See, she used to work for Crytek, and while at Crytek she worked on Ryse, that swordfighting Kinect game. Here’s what the Crytek section of her profile looks like.

A Siliconera source tells them that Dead Rising 3 will be making its way to the fictional town of Los Perdidos, California, which is under quarantine and martial law after a zombie outbreak happened there.

That’s Rick, the alleged lead of the game. The story goes that somebody is going to blow up Los Perdidos with a nuke or something, and Rick has to fix up a plane and fly out of there before the bomb goes off. Sounds like a plan.

According to the source, somebody named Red is the leader of a group of “illegals,” or unregistered infected folks. The source says there will be thematic parallels to illegal immigration in the game.

The source also says one of the bad guys drives a motorcycle that has a steamroller insted of a front wheel. That sounds really stupid.

Croteam and Devolver are apparently well-pleased with the reception to Serious Sam: BFE, and to celebrate, they’re giving the fans a lovable Christmas gift in the form of a Santa skin available via free DLC. That’s a photo of it above. Neat, huh? Almost, one might say, a Christmas miracle. Davor Hunski, Chief Creative Guy at Croteam had this to say:

We’ve been incredibly pleased by the positive reception from gamers with the release of Serious Sam 3: BFE on PC. To celebrate, we wanted to give our fans a little holiday gift and thank them for being so supportive of Croteam and the Serious Sam series for all these years.

Fork Parker, Devolver Digital CFO and possessor of the greatest name ever, had this to say:

Giving away this sweet, sweet premium content for free really puts a damper on my holiday cheer. Looks like I’ll have to tell the orphanage I can’t buy them bicycles, candy, and handguns again this year. They’ll be ever so disappointed.

A new mod for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim‘s graphics really drives the color. Check out the video below to see what I mean.

The mod is the work of ENB (otherwise known as Boris Vorontsov), the guy who took it upon himself to strip out the gold tone that Eidos Montreal used on Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The stylistic choice on Eidos’ part wasn’t necessarily a hit with everyone who played the game, though, and the shader mod ESB created brought out the true colors in the game — and it actually looked pretty great.

This Skyrim mod isn’t complete; in fact, it sounds like it’s still being tweaked. You can download the mod (and others) on ESB’s site right here.

I have to say, I wasn’t all that excited about RAAM’s Shadow, a $15 add-on campaign for Gears of War 3, when I first heard about it. First off, it covers characters who are not Delta Squad, the group we’ve been following since the first Gears of War. That meant no Marcus Phoenix, no Dom, and most importantly, no Cole. Why would I want to play that?

Thankfully, I was wrong. RAAM’s Shadow, which is set before Gears 1, brings back a few characters from the Gears lore for another pass. Specifically, they’re Kim from Gears 1 and Tai from Gears 2, who apparently served in the same squad together for a bit back during the early days of the war with the Locust. RAAM’s Shadow is all about the evacuation of the old Coalition of Ordered Governments capital, Ilima City, before it comes under massive Locust attack. Through the course of the DLC, you bounce back and forth between controlling two groups: Zeta squad, under Kim’s leadership, and a small group of Locust elite in which you’ll control Gears 1 Big Bad General RAAM himself.

RAAM’s Shadow does a pretty solid job of setting some high stakes right at its outset, something Gears 3 struggled with throughout the course of its campaign. The city is about to fall — there’s no avoiding it. Locust Seeders are covering the sky in black ink to block out the sun. Once that happens, darkness-loving flying teeth monsters called Kryll will have the run of the city and murder anything still alive within it.

So it’s not Alan Wake: Night Springs, like we thought, but Alan Wake’s American Nightmare.

The Xbox Live Arcade downloadable title following up last year’s stellar thriller Alan Wake is set to be unveiled at the VGAs this weekend, but it’s not Alan Wake 2, developer Remedy has said.

Unfortunately, that’s about all we know. We’ve seen Alan Wake in some flannel in a really short teaser, and a screen from the upcoming game suggests he’ll be going to Night Springs, a fictional town that was the focus of a “Twilight Zone”-like TV show that featured fairly heavily in the last game. In the lore of Alan Wake, Alan Wake (the dude) formerly wrote for the “Night Springs” TV show earlier in his career.

The fact that the title of the game is now revealed to be Alan Wake’s American Nightmare suggests to me that more supernatural reality-bending is at work here. Wake (the dude) spent quite a while in a sort of dream world during the two DLC releases that followed Alan Wake. American Nightmare could very well carry a literal meaning.

First-person shooter Killing Floor is looking out for you and your holiday spirit with its latest themed update, Twisted Christmas, available right now on Steam. And just in time for new stuff to kill in Killing Floor is a free Steam weekend that starts now and runs through Dec. 11.

The massive success of Rocksteady’s Batman: Arkham City and Batman: Arkham Asylum in the last few years has laid the groundwork for Warner Bros. Montreal to start turning more DC Comics franchises into video games.

Martin Carrier, vice president and studio head at Warner Bros. Montreal, told Canadian Business that a pair of really good Batman games have gone and reminded people that most superhero games are disappointing, and that they don’t have to stand for it.

And that means that players think superhero games can be good and that they’d like to play them, and Warner Bros. thinks that it could sell superhero games to people because they’ve proven they can make a good one. And that means it’s time to turn to the DC Comics vault.

“We’re definitely working closely with DC on different titles, yet to be announced,” Carrier said. “It’s one of the reasons we talk to Geoff Johns and Jim Lee [the comic publisher heads] on a regular basis. It’s interesting for our geeky side to be in touch with those guys, especially now that they’ve relaunched all the 52 [comics].

Don’t you just love these Battlefield 3 multiplayer map trailers? They’re so much more exciting than the typical map fly-through things that we usually get. This trailer for Wake Island, included in the Back to Karkand expansion, is no exception.

If you’re a PC or Xbox 360 gamer, this isn’t going to make the wait for Back to Karkand (coming next week) feel any shorter. If you’re a PS3 gamer… what are you doing here? Play the damn game.

Among the worst things about the XBLA interface – perhaps even worse than the fact that the new one is basically daring you not to waste your money on Kinect – is the dashboard ads that have started popping up. Lame. Luckily, Reddit to the rescue. Redditer Absurdlyobfuscated has posted a very simple to follow how-to for getting rid of these obtrusive eyesores. Despite being relatively simple, there’s a lot of things you’ll need to do, so pay attention:

1) Sign up for an OpenDNS account (it’s free).
2) Add a network for your current IP address.
3) Go to Advanced Settings and next to ‘Domain Typos’, check the box ‘Enable typo correction’ if it’s not already checked and apply.
4) Got to Web Content Filtering settings and set the filtering level to ‘None’, and under ‘Manage individual domains’, put rad.msn.com and select ‘Always block’ and then click ‘Add domain’. Screenshot.
5) On your Xbox, go to System Settings -> Network Settings -> (your connection) -> Configure Network -> DNS settings -> Manual, and enter the OpenDNS IP addresses for the primary and secondary DNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.
6) You may need to clear your hard drive cache before ads disappear entirely: System Settings -> Storage -> Hard Drive -> press Y -> Clear System Cache (note that you’ll have to re-download any title updates for any games you play after doing this).
7) No longer pay to be advertised to.

What can a one-minute-long trailer tell you about a game? Well, it can tell you what it looks like, and that’s what this trailer for the top-down strategic title Jagged Alliance: Back in Action (coming to PC in February) does really well. You will know exactly what this game looks like after watching this trailer. Do it.

OnLive has finally launched their long-awaited table and phone app that will let you play games from OnLive on the go or on the toilet or wherever you want, really. The app is already up in the Android Market, if you have an approved device, and I know that because our bro with the Samsung Galaxy Tab is already playing with it. You’ll want to give it a go, too, as everyone who downloads the app on an Android device gets Lego Batman for free, although we haven’t yet figured out how that works.

We’re still waiting for it to hit iTunes, but we expect that you’ll be downloading and playing in just a few short hours. And then freedom will be yours for all time.

Right now you’ll have to be happy with touch controls, because the new wireless controller that is supposed to work with mobile devices hasn’t been released yet. But OnLive expects to be selling those in just a few days.

The world’s first gaming laptop, the Razer Blade, will be shipping by Christmas, Kotaku is reporting. They say some folks — friends of the company and folks in game publishing — have already received units, and you’ll be able to place your $2,800 order in the next few days at the Razer Zone.

When I say it will ship by Christmas, I mean exactly that. They don’t say exactly when it will ship, just that if you order as soon as you can it will get to you by that all-important date at the end of the month.

The ultimate goal for Battlefield 3, according to EA, was to steal market share from Call of Duty. With Modern Warfare 3 posting another record release, outselling black Ops’ launch by a not-insignificant margin, it seems like that attempt failed. Or not, if you believe Peter Moore, EA’s COO (speaking to IndustryGamers).

I think when the dust fully settles, maybe when we’re looking at this at the end of our fiscal year [on March 31], we’ll do an analysis and I think we will have taken share. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, unless everything BF3 sells is just incremental.

OK, OK, I guess the matter isn’t fully settled. We’ll just have to wait and see how lifetime sales are going in a couple months.

No, wait, we need to make a declaration right now. Call of Duty wins! There.

EA COO Peter Moore (speaking with IndustryGamers) thinks the move to digital delivery of all video game content is inevitable, and that it could kill some companies.

The companies that have prepared themselves and have diversified their offerings to chase the consumer wherever they want to play games are the companies that will succeed and thrive and flourish. Companies that continue to rely on the old model as the model changes before our eyes, unless they change their ways and invest in the future those companies eventually will die off. No two ways about it.

Very bleak, Peter. Very bleak indeed. But he’s probably right. Someone will cling to the old ways too long and won’t be able to catch up. Probably. Or maybe everyone will heed this warning and no one will be left behind. Yeah!

Do you have Madden 12, FIFA 12 or NHL 12 on PS3? Well, EA Sports has a proposition for you. You can sign up here for the EA Sports Challenge Series and have a chance to win $1 million. Here’s what you have to do: pay a $10 entry fee; win six games in a row in your chosen game against other players in the Challenge Series, go to the Challenge Series finals in New York in April; own ass there; win $1 million.

And that’s all there is to it. You just have to be awesome at this, which you probably are. I mean, really, you got this ish. You got this.

In terms of most hours played, total, Modern Warfare 3 is the most played game of the year. But that’s not a fair metric. A better one is most hours played per person, and Skyrim wins that battle, a Raptr report proclaims. Skyrim players have averaged a ridiculous 24 hours played, to 20 hours per person for Modern Warfare 3.

Raptr also found that the average play session for Skyrim was 2.92 hours, which is also ridiculous. Where do people find the time, I wonder? It must be somewhere around here, I guess.

The no. 3 most played game, per person, was Battlefield 3. No. 4 was Gears of War 3, and Batman: Arkham City was no. 5.

So, Steam is getting coupons that you can use to get discounts on stuff. Cool. The first coupon, according to VE3D, goes to people who own Railworks (they don’t say which one); they get 50% off anything by the folks who make that game, which means you get 50% off Train Simulator expansions. (its Railworks 3: Train Simulator 2012... - Danny)

Here is the FAQ for coupons, from Steam Support:

How many coupons can I use on an item?

You can use one coupon per item.

Can I use coupons on already discounted items?

Coupons are valid on discounted items unless specified otherwise.

What happens to my coupons when they expire?

Expired coupons will be automatically removed from your inventory.

How do I know which products the coupon can apply to?

Coupons in your inventory will have a button marked “View Applicable Games” in the detail panel for each one. Following this button will show you a page with available products that the coupon can apply to.

For more please click below

Read: Steam Getting CouponsGamefront News: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Dev GSC Is Closing … Or It Isn’t … Or Maybe It Is

Rumors are flying that GSC Gameworld, the developer of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and the in-production S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, is being shut down.

Just what’s happening to GSC isn’t exactly clear. RPS first reported the story, citing a Ukranian news story saying that GSC’s owner, Sergei Grigorovich, was upset with the progress of the new game (I’m not typing that name again) and decided to shutter the studio.

Here’s where it gets weird: GSC denied the closing on its official Twitter feed, saying, “No we have not closed GSC or cancelled #stalker2.” But, that update has disappeared from the Twitterverse — leaving the closing of the studio ambiguous.

It’s believed that GSC has between 40 or 50 employees, but as to what’s going to happen to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, it seems nobody knows for sure right now. The Ukranian news post even speculates that, given the series’ Chernobyl setting, it could have been government intervention causing the rumored closure.

If you’re a Call of Duty player, perhaps you’ve been using – or trying to use – Call of Duty: Elite? Maybe you’re happy with it, maybe not, but its success is certain to have a huge influence on the gaming world. I expect to see more than one Elite clone in the coming months.

One company that isn’t likely to follow Activision’s lead and come up with their own premium money siphoning service? Take-Two. Chairman and CEO Strauss Zelnick spoke a bit about Elite recently at the UBS Media and Communications Conference, saying “I can’t tell whether it’s relevant yet. I’m kind of skeptical, frankly.” So, don’t expect Grand Theft Auto: Elite any time in the future.

As if to drive the point home, Zelnik added a subtle dig to an unnamed company that is obviously Activision, and the constant releases of sequels and spin offs of games that perhaps don’t need them. “If you start trying to stamp these products out annually,” he said, “we don’t think that’s consistent with a high-quality result. If you give consumers something every year like clockwork, even if it’s fantastic, there’s a high chance they’re going to get tired of it.” Normally this might come off like sour grapes or preemptive justification for an inability to compete. But Take-Two is probably the only developer aside from EA who can match Activision Blizzard in market share and financial powerfulhugeness. So, they know what they’re talking about.

Called by its developers the first Vietnamese game to be released in the United States, 7554 tells the story of Vietnamese forces battling against the French in the First Indochina War. The name of the game represents 7 May 1954, which was the day when the French finally surrendered, ending the war.

7554 will run you a mere $12 when it comes out on PC in the US in February, and so I think we’re all going to have to try it just to see what’s up. And it looks pretty good anyway.

The device that will give the Nintendo 3DS an extra circle pad, dubbed the Circle Pad Pro, will have, uh, substantial battery life, according to a dude in Japan who just got one. He says the device’s manual tells us that it will go 480 hours on a single AAA battery, which seems ridiculous and untrue. But maybe it is true. I guess we’ll just have to take the manual’s word for it. Just think; that’ll get you through Metal Gear Solid 3D like 20 times.

You know, that’s such good battery life that I would probably never have to change the battery. It’s not like I ever play 3DS anyway.

If you were as skeptical as I was of Ninja Gaiden 3‘s multiplayer, then you were pretty damn skeptical. Well, the folks at IGN did some livestreaming of said multiplayer in action, and and the folks at Gaming Everything captured some of the footage, and the folks at Game Front are going to show this video to you. Prepare to be totally baffled as to why anyone would want to play this. Or maybe you’ll think it’s awesome. I don’t really know you, so I can’t say what you’ll think, I guess. Anyway, here’s the video.

THQ high-up Danny Bilson spoke with AusGamers recently, telling them we can expect an “exciting” new game announcement from them in the near future.

We actually have a game we haven’t announced yet and I can’t announce tonight — but we will be around December — that’ll be coming out next year that is also very exciting,

Well, I would guess that if they’re going to announce something new it’s going to be on Saturday at the Spike VGAs. That’s where all the other big announcements this month are going to come, so why not this one? We’ll see very soon.

If you’ve been wondering whether your system can run The Old Republic — or whether you can comfortably max out its settings — the good people at Tom’s Hardware have benchmarked the game and come up with some hard evidence. They found that the two graphics options that affect performance in a significant way are bloom and shader detail, with other settings having little impact on performance, even at maximum settings.

For those with low-end cards, there’s some bad news:

Although it doesn’t look particularly demanding, Star Wars: The Old Republic seems to require mid-range graphics hardware in order to run smoothly. The Radeon HD 6450 GDDR5 is a fairly respectable low-end card, yet it couldn’t muster a minimum 30 FPS at 1280×1024 using the lowest available detail settings. That’s a pretty high requirement for an MMO, a genre that traditionally targets low-end integrated graphics hardware in order to accommodate the largest possible install base.

However, all it takes is a mid-range card to run the game on high settings:

At low detail settings you’ll want at least a Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTS 450 for smooth 1680×1050 frame rates. At high settings, even with 4x MSAA, the game doesn’t need much more, and a Radeon HD 5770/6770 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti can handle 1920×1080.

If you somehow didn’t get into The Old Republic‘s beta-test — which was one of the largest betas in MMO history — and have been dying to play the game, here’s some good news: if you pre-order TOR, you’ll be able to start playing on December 13, a full week before the game hits shelves.

Of course, you’ll have to download a digital copy of the game, which weighs in at over 20 gigs. Depending on your internet connection, that could means hours of waiting. Fortunately, if you’ve pre-ordered, you can pre-load the game as of now, so that when Dec 13 hits, you can start playing the very minute they open the floodgates.

The Old Republic reaches stores on December 20, 2011 in North America and on December 15th in Europe.

When you think of Katamari, billiards immediately come to mind, right? Right? No? OK, yeah, I don’t get the connection either, but whoever made this Touch My Katamari trailer went there. And it’s weird. Just watch it.

Toys R Us can be a cool place to buy games sometimes, and now is one of those times. Right now, they’re doing a buy-one-get-one-half-off sale on all the games they have.

Amazon, being a creepy corporate giant (that I love) intent on destroying all brick-and-mortar stores, is matching the deal. I don’t know if they’re offering the deal on every game, but they have 991 games and accessories to choose from, including like Skyrim and stuff, so whatever you’re looking for is probably there.

Earlier tonight we discussed the news that Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of Mario and Zelda, would be stepping down from his position at Nintendo to work on smaller projects. Apparently, that isn’t true in some way, as Nintendo spokespeople were quick to tell everyone.

This is absolutely not true. There seems to have been a misunderstanding. He has said all along that he wants to train the younger generation. He has no intention of stepping down. Please do not be concerned.

I don’t really know what this means. He’s clearly doing something, making some sort of movement. I would guess this merely means that he’ll still be working for Nintendo, which isn’t exactly surprising. But he’s probably not going to make any more Zelda or Mario games. I would think.

Whatevs. This story really wasn’t that big a deal anyway since it was clear he wasn’t retiring from game development.

Debut trailers may just be the best part of the VGAs this year. The title to Alan Wake’s sequel was revealed earlier this week,
but this is the world debut of the psychological action thriller. Will Alan Wake: American Nightmare be able to live up to its predecessor, given its relatively short development time? The trailer looks promising — but trailers can be deceiving.

We’ve long known that the third game in the BioShock series was going to be a dramatic scene and setting change, from an undersea civilization to a floating city in the sky. But we finally have a close look at just how that’s going to look in play (a welcome change after a lengthy period of not seeing very much at all). A few things stand out:

* The statue at the beginning is, I assume, of someone associated with the founding of Columbia, but notice how it’s apparently a glammed up Teddy Roosevelt? Teddy is of course the president associated the most with America’s emergence as a world power, symbolized by his sending the US Naval fleet on a voyage around the world. I assume Comstock’s aesthetic is intended to evoke that and perhaps this plays into the game’s alternate history. Perhaps, instead of sending the American fleet worldwide, he sends Columbia instead, to some disastrous results.

* Speaking of, BSI takes place in 1912, which is interesting in that it’s the same year that Teddy Roosevelt publicly broke with the Republican party to run against William Taft as a progressive Bull Moose Candidate. This split the national vote and sent Woodrow Wilson into the White House. Not only did this ultimately lead to US involvement in World War 1, it also saw the first time institutional racism was enacted at the Federal level (Wilson was a HUGE racist). We all know how that kind of racism is going to be a big part of BSI, but I wonder if election going on back in America has any significance to the plot.

It’s been 8 years since the release of Command & Conquer: Generals, and it seems BioWare has picked up the franchise to bring us the long-awaited sequel. This is a drastic departure from BioWare’s usual style, but I’m sure this trailer, debuted tonight at the 2011 VGAs, has more than a few C&C fans giddy.

The world premiere of the Diablo 3 opening cinematic debuted at the 2011 VGAs, and it seems like Blizzard killed off one of the series’ most memorable characters before the game even begins. Can they really do that? I, like Break Media Gaming Editor Mark Burnham, suspect there is more at play — that some Deus Ex machina will save our dear Cain from that apocalyptic meteorite impact.

We still don’t have an official release date, but the earliest speculated date predicts the game will hit shelves on January 17. Don’t hold your breath, though. It’ll still be a while before we learn Cain’s fate.

I love the way words that have plenty of nuance in their native tongue become completely subjected to whatever the first context foreigners heard the word in other languages. Like “Raiden”, for instance. In Japanese, it just means Thunder and Lightning, but I can’t help but think of Mortal Kombat every time I hear it.

Anyway, Raiden ws the playable protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. He showed up in Metal Gear Solid 4 as a weird cyborg ninja thing, and now with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance we get to find out how that happened. I’m assuming it was the result of an accident caused when he crammed the words vengeance and revenge into one another.

So there are these giant robots. For some reason, they transform into vehicles. I know, but it was the 80s. A crazy time. I still don’t remember half of it, and that isn’t just because I was really young. I mean, who the hell wants to ride around inside a car that at any time could turn into a giant robot, and presumably, crush you? Didn’t anyone watch Macross? Also, why would they turn into vehicles before meeting people who could ride in them?

Anyway, it seems these robots came fro a robot planet, and that planet has been ripped apart by civil war. Which is why the haunting civil war hymn is playing in this trailer, which premiered tonight at the VGAs. You know what? I have no idea what happens, aside from bumblebee getting killed, apparently, and Optimus Prime weeping. But these graphics look pretty insane, don’t they?

A few days ago, we speculated that, based on scant information in the The Last Of Us teaser, “Cordyceps is a type of parasitic fungus that is able to affect its host’s behavior. While there are no currently known species that affect humans, the premise of this game may involve a deadly evolution.” Looks like we were right. Here’s the trailer that just showed on the VGAs.

So what do you think? Is it a strong entry in the survival horror genre or just another post-apocalyptic game? Personally I think it looks like Nathan Drake meets The Stand, and that’s alright with me. Let us know what you think.

So there are these giant robots. For some reason, they transform into vehicles. I know, but it was the 80s. A crazy time. I still don’t remember half of it, and that isn’t just because I was really young. I mean, who the hell wants to ride around inside a car that at any time could turn into a giant robot, and presumably, crush you? Didn’t anyone watch Macross? Also, why would they turn into vehicles before meeting people who could ride in them?

Anyway, it seems these robots came fro a robot planet, and that planet has been ripped apart by civil war. Which is why the haunting civil war hymn is playing in this trailer, which premiered tonight at the VGAs. You know what? I have no idea what happens, aside from bumblebee getting killed, apparently, and Optimus Prime weeping. But these graphics look pretty insane, don’t they?

Spike TV has created what some may argue is long overdue and some may feel is a dangerous move toward ossified irrelevance*, the Video Game Hall of Fame, and the first indctee is the, ahem, legendary Legend of Zelda franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto made a charming appearance to accept, and reminded me of why I was such a super Nintendo fanboy for so many years. Seriously, there’s just something kind of wonderfully wholesome about the culture of Nintendo, right? One thing he did not talk about was the rumor, since denied, that he would be stepping down. So don’t ask!

*I confess. I feel this way. BOOO Hall of fames! They turn living culture into museum fixtures! That’s bad! But if we have to have a hall of fame, then I support this selection if only because it’s a perfect depiction of how lackluster Miyamoto’s output has been in recent years. The man is a genius and undeniably one of the all-time most important figures in gaming, but he’s been essentially reiterating past successes for more than a decade.

This being the first ever inductee, we can’t say for certain, but it appears the VGHoF is going the Rock and Roll hall of fame route by requiring a 25 year span since original publication in order to qualify. If true, then there’s a lot of old, forgotten games that seriously deserve the recognition. Let us know in comments what you’d like to see, or if you’d even like to see any.

Zimos is possibly the only depressing thing in Saints Row: The Third. His introduction is one of the most fun moments in the game, and his auto-tuned voice makes his in-play comments (“that was smooooth”) even better. But then you realize the reason he’s autotuned is that he’s had a tracheotomy, presumably from the cigarettes he continues to smoke despite having had his vocal chords destroyed. So don’t smoke, kids. Because it will seriously f*ck your breathing parts up and kill you.

There, now that the PSA is out the way, the Z-style Saints Row: The third DLC pack is available. It gives you a kick ass triple-barrel shotgun and, of course, a Saints version of Zimos’ trademark pimp outfit. Awesomeness.

The outgoing year of Two-Thousand and Eleven is a milestone in gaming for two interesting reasons. First, despite being a year laden with sequels, it saw a pretty huge number of great releases all the way through — ranging from Dead Space 2 to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

And second: It was a year of absolutely dismal triple-A PC launches from major publishers.

Looking back, I struggle to think of a top-tier, non-indie game that had a decent launch. Even smaller titles like From Dust were marred by issues — in its case, idiotic controversy because of Ubisoft’s misleading comments about DRM. And larger games from respected PC gaming companies, such as id Software, DICE and Bethesda, have come broken, needing Day 1 patches, and seemingly falling apart at the seams (or in RAGE’s case, the textures).

What’s the deal there? Why can’t anybody get their PC-launching s–t together? Is it really that difficult for DICE and Electronic Arts to have enough servers ready to go at the launch of their biggest shooter franchise, or for id to make sure its game works with all the major video card manufacturers, or for Bethesda to run Skyrim through QA at all?

Today on the Mojang blog Tobias Mollstam explained how your accounts for Minecraft, Cobalt and Scrolls will work together in harmony.

The idea is that you use this Mojang account (where the username would be your e-mail address) to sign in to Minecraft, to Scrolls and to Cobalt. After that you would proceed to choosing which profile you’d like to play as—for Minecraft this would correspond to today’s accounts (premium status, display name, skin etc).

They say you won’t be forced into this if you have an existing Minecraft account — you’ll be given the option to opt in — but I assume you will have to use it when you pick up Cobalt and Scrolls.

In terms of keeping everything tidy, this is probably a good thing. Now, if only Mojang could figure out their issues with Steam so we could just put these games there…

This is a twist I wasn’t expecting — Xbox is partnering with Cafepress to make it so you can buy a t-shirt or coffee mug or duffel bag or whatever that has a picture of your Xbox Live avatar on it. It’s quite ridiculous. Why would you want this? I don’t get the appeal of this at all, but there must be a survey somewhere that says there is interest in it. There must be, right?

Empire at War: Phoenix Rising: Prepare For Ground Assault
In December 2009, I received an unexpected message from a fellow mod leader here at Revora that would alter the path of v1.2 development. Nertea, from The Dwarf Holds ( http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dwarf-holds ), offered his expertise on vehicle modeling. This set in motion a course of events that would come to define the release. What v0.1 was for space combat, v1.2 will be for land combat. In effect, this will be our Land Mini-Mod.

The last version was a false start for ground battles, more raw specs than mechanic. While there is still much work to be done before we can declare a PR v2.0, the essence of Land is here now. We have a robust framework in place that is just waiting to flourish into a complete game mode. Our goal? To bring epicness and accuracy planetside. And to do it even better than we did for space.

There are obvious drawbacks in our decision to delay ground development, but one of the benefits is veterancy: we're all better at this than we were five years ago. Given the opportunity to start again essentially from scratch, I'm certain we can craft a superior experience.

The difference between land and space, however, is more than a matter of gravity. There is a real dichotomy here for a number of reasons, at the root of which is the science fiction axiom of "why bother with land battles when you can fight in space". We know relatively little about ground combat during the Galactic Civil War - it just isn't written about. This leaves us with a fairly open canvas.

While depictions of army battles in our era are few, we fortunately have some phenomenal roleplaying material from which to draw individual units - great concepts that have been perpetually trapped in stat blocks and two dimensions. Given the movie models we had on-hand already from EaW, our most dire need was clear: the Armored Freerunner. That was the unit Nertea first set out to recreate that winter, thus commencing our renewed take on land combat.

For more of this news post please click the link below. (it is too long for the insider but there are lots more pictures though - Danny)

The latest in the string of continual reminders that tablets and smartphones are becoming legitimate pieces of gaming hardware, Rockstar has announced a release date for a mobile port of Grand Theft Auto III: Dec. 15.

The Playstation 2 classic is in its 10th anniversary this year, and in celebration, Rockstar is releasing Grand Theft Auto III: 10th Anniversary Edition (go figure) for a mere $4.99 on select iOS and Android devices. And here’s the good news: you won’t necessarily need a dual-core super-great smartphone to play it on. (Bad news: you will need a decent phone.)

Rockstar’s press release says the following devices will be supported:

Earlier today a Ukrainian News Site (UkraNews) posted that GSC Game World has shut down by owner Sergei Grigorovich. This was apparently told to the staff earlier today. At the time of posting, only Google Translations of the article were available for the English Speaking world but several sites (Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer) had posted about it.

Shortly thereafter GSCStalker's Official Twitter posted a denial saying GSC wasn't closing but that has since been removed

In a blog by 1C Ukraine's Sergey Galenkin he details some of what appears to have happened.

Quote:GSC is no more. Almost everyone is let go, only few people left and still employed. STALKER 2 project is closed.

My friends at GSC believe that the reason for that is failed console publishing deal. GSC couldn’t sign any publisher for STALKER 2 on consoles, and GSC wasn’t strong enough to do it all by itself. STALKER 2 was going to become PC exlcusive, which isn’t a great future for story-driven game.

Some say that Grigorovich demanded a lot from publishers and his terms were unacceptable, some say that publishers didn’t like setting – Eastern European postapocalypse is not that popular outside Europe. I don’t know which is true, but guess it is a bit of both.

Also, some people at GSC say that Grigorovich wasn’t happy with quality of STALKER 2, but others say it was going to be a great game and huge improvement over first one. One guy said that Grigorovich was tired of game development and no longer interested in STALKER at all, but I don’t believe it, knowing Sergey for last ten years. He might be tired, yes, but he loved STALKER.

I want to make sure it's clear that as of right now, all of this is unofficial and taken by someone who isn't a GSC Employee but it seems to be the best info we have right now.

For the Full version of the blog post (It's translated into English at the bottom of the page) go here.

On Monday we should get some Official Word from GSC on what is going on and the future of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 and the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Series.

I for one don't see it dying here. There are books, clothing, movies and TV Shows that were being made in addition to the games themselves. Hopefully someone is able to pick up the IP and do it proper justice.

I'm not sure why but this website is loading incredibly slow for me. Is anyone else having this issue or is it a issue on my end? I'll check back later and see if the problem still exists.

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